“For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.” (Romans 3:3-4)
I just got back from our annual missions trip to Belize. For 11 glorious days, I did not speak on the phone one time, log on to the internet, or watch television for even a nano-second. Yet the world continued to spin without me. It is amazing what can be accomplished without Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Don’t misunderstand. People in Belize have cell phones and internet. We even saw someone texting while riding a bicycle. They might even have life a little better if they had more technology, but we would have it a lot better with less. When I got home, one of my first tasks was to clean out my inbox of my emails. I had 153 new emails. After deleting all the junk, I only opened and read 17 of them. 136 of the new emails were deleted without even considering their content. Most of them were attempts to separate me from my hard earned money, including over 20 of them from an overseas banker promising me several million dollars from a Nigerian prince if I would only give them my bank account number and pay a nominal fee. I even had an offer to move to England and be a nanny for a couple of fine well behaved young children ages 5 and 7. (That is one of the 17 emails that I read. I was way too curious as to who would offer me a job like that.) It is amazing to me how these scam emails keep coming. I am sure I have deleted thousands of them in the last few years, yet they still hit me. Someone out there must be falling for it, or they would not keep trying.
People believe all kinds of stupid junk. It is amazing what some people will fall for. How many of our fellow travellers on this giant dirt ball believe we actually descended from monkeys? Still yet, how many of them believe that they just might be good enough to gain heaven based on what they have done in this life? The Bible clearly spells out how to be saved by trusting in the blood of Jesus alone, yet man comes up with a “scam” a minute to deny that truth and lead people astray. Our enemy is constantly bombarding humanity with endless “emails” offering a way of salvation that is not genuine or valid. Despite that almost universal knowledge that the Nigerian banker emails are a scam, they keep coming, and not just in a trickle, but a tsunami. The simple plan of salvation by grace in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross has been published and proclaimed for generations. The apostle Paul committed its truths to writing 2,000 years ago. God confirms its truth daily as the gospel is preached in every corner of the world to this day. Yet the scams continue and proliferate.
It always amazes me when someone tries to spout out the atheist / agnostic position that “I just don’t believe in God…” They think that makes him go away. It is as if God sits in heaven saying, “Well, since these people don’t believe I exist, I will just give up.” I was there many years ago myself. Being raised in a religious home, I did what many young people do in that stage of life, I rebelled. Our religion was not New Testament fundamental Bible believing Christianity, it was Catholicism. I rebelled against the dry institutional “form of godliness” that did not proclaim the simplicity of the gospel or speak to the heart. So in rebelling, I took it way too far and rebelled against God. I thought God was manifest in the institution of the structure of the Catholic Church rather than God being seen through the pages of his book. So I became “atheist” to a point; more practically than theologically. Deep down inside, I always knew there had to be a God, but I just had no use for him. I guess I really did believe that one day, some Nigerian prince would make my life worthwhile. How wrong I was.
Be not deceived. God is still on the throne and ready to return any day. Anchor your life to the truth and then send it out to those who need it. The time is short.
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